This is a naïve question, but why on earth are unions isolated to one company so often in USA? Surely an industry-wide solution would be more effective.
Industry-wide unions have been stomped out over time, some by direct actions from companies or the government, some from corruption, some from propaganda campaigns. It is one of the many sad parts of being in the U.S.
I don't know the history exactly, but my assumption is that trying to bootstrap an industry-wide union from nothing is exceedingly difficult, while making one at a single company is much more viable. Presumably the idea would be to merge the company-specific ones into industry ones after they're more stable.
It's not a US thing, in my opinion. The industry based unions are currently very strong and some are on strike right now (nurses, auto workers, writers, actors). To me the idea of forming a new union to target a single employer seems like a losing strategy.
